Every great once in a while, my son does or says something that makes me think I might be getting through to him.
He recently plowed through his piles of drawings, and all the ones he wanted to keep are now neatly three-hole-punched and gathered together in a binder. He then tossed the ones he didn’t want into the recycling bin. That’s huge. (I don’t think I can stress enough….that’s huge.)
When he came home from a shopping trip with Grammy three T-shirts richer, I informed him that he had to get rid of three he already had. Which he did–without protest. (Again….huge.)
The funniest part, though, was a conversation we had in the car as we drove by a video store. “Mom?” he asked thoughtfully. “Why do we buy movies?”
He then went on to explain his train of thought: we always check them out from the library, or we might go to a Redbox or video store (actually, I can’t remember the last time I set foot in a video store), or we record things on the DVR….but why do people bother to buy movies?
That’s a really good question, kiddo….
My response? “Well, I think they just make really easy gifts.”
I looked through the movies on our shelves (we have 99 DVD’s right now, 76 of which are actually movies*), and they seem to be full of still-wrapped-in-plastic “hey, he really liked this movie–I’ll get it for him for Christmas!” types of things. Secret Santa gifts from coworkers; birthday gifts from people who don’t know you well enough to know what you really might want….a movie is a safe, easy gift idea. And we have two shelves full of them.
I’m fairly certain I know what’s next on my list to weed through….
*What else could there be, you ask? TV series collections and DVD’s of concerts. The concerts, I’m quite sure, are staying. 🙂
Pursuing "enough" 
We’ve really backed away from movies too. We use Netflix (we don’t have cable), and we’re backed up with those, too. I have plenty of friends who have bought TONS of DVDs. Even friends who jumped on the BluRay wagon. You would think that we would have learned with VHS (I even grew up on Beta), but alas. Old habits die hard…
Beta! 🙂 Love it.
I get hung up on the kids’ movies. I recognize that my eight-year-old son is never going to watch Thomas the Tank Engine again, but with children as yet unknown in our future, I’m hesitant to get rid of them. It’s the classic case of “we might need that someday!”–because it’s very true!
On the plus side, DVD’s are crazy neat and easy to store. Line ’em all up in a straight row…can’t beat that. 😉